But what you are proposing is not moving on, it is standing still. You are like the people who opposed the railways or enacted the Red Flag laws for early automobiles, standing foursquare in the path of progress.

My ilk are for progress, Malcolm. You and your ilk are for a (very) short term benefit to your own pocket at the expense of future generations.

As for panicking, I believe it is you and your fellow sufferers from turbophobia that are panicking with the realisation that onshore wind will achieve grid parity in four years time or less. The whole denier thing is unravelling.

Renewable energy is here to stay, wind, wave and tidal. Live with it.

Webcraft also commented

Renewables generated 35% of Scotland’s electricity demand last year.

Wind accounted for just over half this. The rest came largely from hydro, but some also came from solar and biomass.

When you consider the huge changes the coming of the hydro made to the Scottish landscape and the time it took to build the schemes the fact that wind has surpassed it already is quite impressive.

Malcolm, tell me more about wind turbines being shut down at night please. I think you are just making this up as you go along.

Malcolm,

The 35% figure I mentioned does not refer the capacity factor of wind in Scotland in 2011. I am talking about the total amount of electricity generated and fact that the equivalent of 35% of all electricity used in Scotland was generated by renewable sources last year.

Renewable electricity generation in 2011 was a record high at 13,750 GWh. Of this 7,049 GWh (over half) was wind. Wind therefore generated the equivalent of over 17.5% of Scotland’s electricity demand last year.

I don’t regard 17.5% as too shabby for a newcomer to the generating mix, do you?

‘Token gesture’ huh?

Scotland generated the equivalent of 35% of domestic electricity demand from renewables last year Malcolm.

I have no commercial interest in renewable energy by the way, I just have an interest in new technologies and in the world my grandchildren are going to live in.

Funny how these things come in threes . . .

A report coming out tomorrorow from Renewable Energy Association (REA) and consultants Innovas concludes that the industry is worth £12.5bn per year to the UK economy. It says the renewable energy industry supports 110,000 jobs in the UK and could support 400,000 by 2020.

Recent comments by Webcraft

You seem to be overlooking the fact that a percentage of current UK defence assets would be inherited by an independent Scotland. From that perspective we already ‘own’ approximately 9% of UK military assets. We would not be starting from nothing.

Denmark, which is of a similar size to Scotland, had a 2012 military budget of £2.6bn.

If the SNP form the first independent Scottish government (by no means a racing certainty) then they are committed to an annual defence and security budget of £2.5bn, an annual increase of more than £500m on recent UK levels of defence spending in Scotland.